March 15th 2009

Today we held our March meeting at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN. The next meeting will be held on April 19, 2009 from 12:30 to 3PM at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN.

Present: Vern, John, Scott, Sharon, Tarah.

TALKING STICK 18 BOOK
We have collected all our submissions. We are having our Editorial Board meeting later today. The 3 judges have been chosen: Fiction Faith Sullivan, Creative Nonfiction Maureen Gibbon, Poetry Deborah Keenan. Faith will be attending our Book Release party on Sept. 26, 2009. We had 20 less writers than last year and less fiction and poetry. Tarah is heading back to Oklahoma in a couple of days so she and Sharon will be working on the book long distance.

MISCELLANEOUS
We had a quick meeting and discussion of various writing topics. Scott has been out to LA. Tarah entered a Fantasy Sci-Fi contest. Vern mentioned there are some of John Updike’s last poems in the the New Yorker. He said he will bring us copies of them. We mentioned the short story contest Tamarack–we are not sure when the deadline is.

Several of the members read items they were working on. As always, we gave comments and suggestions.

Scott brought his laptop along and gave us a quick demonstation of various brands of writing software. Here are some of the names–I will send out a more complete email later on with the names, websites, many more bits of information. These help you organize your novel or screenplay.

Whitesmoke

YWriter5

Yeah Write!

Write It Now

My Novel

Dramatica Pro

Story Links

Movie Magic Screen Writer

Final Draft

Scenewriter Pro

Idea Weaver

Writers Blocks

Power Structure

Save the Cat

Open Office

Quark Express

Illustrator

Book Wizard

See you all next time!! If you don’t get the email about these writing programs, please let Sharon know. It might be a week or so.